Books

We offer these resources because they contain interesting information and perspectives on efforts to secure a just peace in Israel and Palestine. The views are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of CJPIP.

Bennis, Phyllis. Understanding the Palestinian—Israeli Conflict: A Primer. (Updated 3rd Edition) Northhampton: Olive Branch Press, 2009. (“This balanced and highly useful “primer” presents in question-and-answer form extensive explanations of recent events in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. It explains both sides’ needs and actions, the recent surge in violence, and the roles of the United States, the United Nations, the Arab States, and Europe. An essential volume by an experienced scholar and analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC.” —Library Journal) Available from Interlink Publishing at www.interlinkbooks.com.
(This book has also been made available by the U.S. Campaign for reading on-line: http://www.endtheoccupation.org/section.php?id=52)

Pappe, Ilan. A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Shlaim, Avi . The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. (“In 1897, under order of First Zionist Congress president Theodor Herzl, two Austrian rabbis traveled to Palestine to explore the possibility of locating a Jewish state there. “The bride is beautiful,” the rabbis cabled Herzl, “but she is married to another man.” That “other man” was the Palestinian Arab nation, long established in the region as a political entity. . . . In this far-ranging history, Avi Shlaim analyzes that . . . [problem] in remarkable detail, tracing the shifting policies of Israel toward the Palestinians and the Arab world at large.” – W.W. Norton Press)

Shlaim, Avi. War and Peace in the Middle East: A Concise History. New York: Penguin, 1995.

Tolan, Sandi. The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew and the Heart of the Middle East. London: Bloomsbury, 2006. (“Tolan personalizes the Arab-Israeli conflict by tracing the intertwined lives of a Palestinian refugee named Bashir Al-Khairi and a Jewish settler named Dalia Eshkenazi Landau. The pair is connected through a stone home in Ramla, now part of Israel. Built in the 1930s by Bashir’s father, the Al-Khairi family was forced to flee during the violent formation of Israel in 1948. The Eshkenazis, Holocaust survivors from Bulgaria, became the new owners. After 1967’s Six Day War, Bashir showed up and Dalia invited him in and began an intense dialogue that’s lasted four decades.” – Publishers Weekly)

History

Aruri, Naseer, ed. Occupation: Israel Over Palestine. 2nd edition. Belmont, Mass: AAUG Press, 1989. (“It is well documented with frequent footnotes to authoritative sources, abundant maps, and various statistical tables. The analytical content is of an equally high level of quality.” – Choice: The Library Magazine)

Avineri, Shlomo. The Making of Modern Zionism: The Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State. 2nd edition. New York: Basic Books, 1984.

Beinin, Joel and Rebecca Stein, eds. The Struggle for Sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993-2005. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, with the Middle East Research and Information Project, 2006. (“…prominent scholars and journalists examine the dramatic political changes in Palestine and Israel from the Oslo Accords through the second intifada and the death of Yasser Arafat. Their essays address the political economy of the Oslo process, social and political changes in Palestine and Israel, United States foreign policy, social movements and political activism, and the interplay between cultural and political-economic processes.” – Stanford University Press)

Beit-Hallahmi, Benjamin. Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel. New York: Olive Branch Press, 1993. (“Original Sins is to date the best brief overview published in English of the definition and history of Zionism in theory and practice.” – Middle East Policy)

Benvenisti, Meron. Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. (“The former deputy mayor of Jerusalem addresses the transformation of an Arab land into a Jewish state from a novel perspective: geography. How, asks Benvenisti (Intimate Enemies, 1995; City of Stone, 1996), did the Arabic names of mountains, towns, and bodies of water get replaced with Hebrew words? How did Umm Jurfinat become Kibbutz Grofit, and Rakhma become Yerukham? And how has the physical and political geography of the Arabs been affected by the development of a state whose mandate is to provide a homeland for Jews? In many ways, the answers Benvenisti provides to these questions comprise a geography not just of Israel but of the author, the son of a leading Israeli geographer who created some of those early Hebrew maps.” – Kirkus Reviews)

Betts, Robert Brenton. The Druze. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988. (“A deeply informed, brightly written account of the Druze that will be read with profit by students of Middle East history, politics, religion, and anthropology as well as by everyone with an interest in Lebanon, Syria, and Israel.” — Michael C. Hudson, Georgetown University)

Boyle, Francis. Palestine, Palestinians and International Law. Atlanta, GA: Clarity Press, 2009. (“[A] valuable historical (and legal) record for those analyzing Palestinian decision-making in the late 1980s and early 1990s.” – Journal of Palestine Studies.)

Carey, Roane, ed. Introduction by Noam Chomsky. The New Intifada: Resisting Israel’s Apartheid. New York: Verso, 2001. (“Edited by Nation copy chief Carey, the book tells a compelling story of repression and resistance and of the triumphs and tragedies of ordinary Palestinians with extraordinary resolve to bring dignity to their daily lives. Contributors to this volume include distinguished activist academics, such as Edward Said and Noam Chomsky, as well as a number of other writers with a long history of either academic, journalistic, or activist involvement in Middle Eastern affairs, such as Robert Fisk, Sara Roy, and Azim Bishara. Although supportive of the plight of the Palestinians, the essays in this volume provide critical analyses of the Palestinian leadership and its tactics and strategies in the conflict.” – Library Journal)

Christison, Kathleen and Bill Christison. Palestine in Pieces: Graphic perspectives on the Israeli Occupation. London: Pluto Press, 2009. (Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA. Kathleen Christison is the author of Perceptions of Palestine: the influence on U.S. policy. The authors describe in text and fifty-two photographs the relentless Zionist appropriation of Palestinian land and resources. – CJPIP)

Cohen, Hillel. Good Arabs: The Israeli Security Agencies and the Israeli Arabs, 1948-1967. Berkeley,CA: University of California Press, 2010. (“[A] damning book detailing the use of the Israeli security forces to suppress the civil liberties and cultural expression of citizens of Palestinian descent who the state thinks of as a potential fifth column and a security risk. Good Arabs describes the deep penetration of intelligence agencies into Palestinian society and its extensive use of Palestinian collaborators to intimidate and control the Arab population. Although the book is mostly about the military government imposed upon the Palestinian citizens of Israel until 1966, it contains much material relevant to the present-day. It is a real eye-opener.” – Ira Glunts)

Davis, Rochelle. Palestinian Village Histories: Geographies of the Displaced. Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010. (“[O]ver four hundred Palestinian villages were depopulated in the 1947-1949 war. With houses mostly destroyed, mosques and churches put to other uses, and cemeteries plowed under, Palestinian communities were left geographically dispossessed. Palestinians have since carried their village names, memories, and possessions with them into the diaspora, transforming their lost past into local histories in the form of “village memorial books”. Numbering more than 100 volumes in print, these books recount family histories, cultural traditions, and the details of village life, revealing Palestinian history through the eyes of Palestinians….this book analyzes individual and collective historical accounts of everyday life in pre-1948 Palestinian villages as composed today from the perspectives of these long-term refugees.” – Stanford University Press.)

Esber, Rosemary M. Under the Cover of War: the Zionist Expulsion of the Palestinians. Alexandria, VA: Arabicus Books, 2008. (“While other recent books on the subject have relied on Israeli and Zionist archival sources, Esber uses British archives and oral testimonies from Palestinian survivors as well as previously used sources to demonstrate that there was a purposeful, systematic pattern by which Zionist forces depopulated Palestinian cities and villages before the end of the British mandate on 15 May 1948 and the subsequent intervention of Arab armies.” – Maureen Claire Murphy)

Farsoun, Samih and Naseer Aruri. Palestine and the Palestinians: A Social and Political History. Boulder: Westview Press, 2006. (“A brilliant achievement. By far the most comprehensive analysis of the political economy of Palestine and Palestinians in the twentieth century.” – Times Literary Supplement)

Finkelstein, Norman. Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. (“Very little of Dershowitz’s widely acclaimed defense of Israel’s occupation policies escapes Finkelstein’s withering scrutiny. Behind Dershowitz’s firm assurances that Israel is dealing with its adversaries justly and humanely, Finkelstein discerns ugly realities, including brutal torture of Palestinian prisoners and lethal disregard for Palestinian children and noncombatants. In Finkelstein’s assessment, Israel is grievously violating Palestinian rights because its leaders deliberately choose to ignore both the humanity of the Palestinian people and the justice of international law. And in the claim that will perhaps stir the fiercest debates, Finkelstein asserts that when Dershowitz and his allies defend Israel with shoddy and mendacious scholarship, they actually stoke the very anti-Semitism they claim to be combating.” – Booklist)

Finkelstein, Norman. Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. 2nd edition. New York: Verso, 2003. (“First published in 1995, this highly acclaimed study scrutinizes popular and scholarly representations of the Israel-Palestine conflict. It begins with a novel theoretical inter-pretation of Zionism, and then moves on to critically engage the influential studies of Joan Peters, Benny Morris, and Anita Shapira. Carefully rehearsing the documentary record, Finkelstein also challenges the dominant images of the June 1967 and October 1973 Arab-Israeli wars. In a comprehensive new introduction, he provides the most succinct overview available in the English language of the Israel-Palestine conflict, while in several new chapters he juxtaposes Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories against South African apartheid, and demolishes the scholarly pretensions of Michael Oren’s recent bestseller on the June 1967 war.” – Verso)

Finkelstein, Norman. Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel is Coming to an End. New York, NY:Or Books, 2012. (“Knowing Too Much sets the work of defenders of Israel such as Jeffrey Goldberg, Michael Oren, Dennis Ross and Benny Morris against the historical record, showing their claims to be increasingly tendentious. As growing numbers of American Jews come to see the speciousness of the arguments behind such apologias and recognize Israel’s record as simply indefensible, Finkelstein points to the opening of new possibilities for political advancement in a region that for decades has been stuck fast in a gridlock of injustice and suffering.” – OR Books / “A very impressive, learned and careful scholar.” – Avi Shlaim, professor, International Relations, Oxford University / Excerpts from Finkelstein’s chapter on Benny Morris, titled “History by Subtraction,” are available online: Norman Finkelstein, “How Benny Morris transformed a patriotic struggle into a ‘holy war’ for ‘sacred Islamic soil,'” Mondoweiss, April 17, 2012.)

Fishback, Michael R. Records of Dispossession: Palestinian Refugee Property and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies and Columbia University Press, 2003. (“This work focuses on the controversial question of the property left behind by the refugees during the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948. Beyond discussing the extent of the refugees’ losses and detailing the methods by which Israel expropriated this property, the book also notes the ways that the property question has affected, and in turn been affected by, the wider Arab-Israeli conflict over the decades….This book tells for the first time the full story of how much property changed hands, what it was worth, and how it was used by the fledgling state of Israel. It then traces the subsequent decades of diplomatic activity on the issue and publishes previously secret UN estimates of the scope and value of the refugee property.” – IPS.) A PDF of the introduction to Records of Dispossession can be downloaded here.

Flapan, Simha. The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities. New York: Pantheon, 1987. (“Utilizing Ben-Gurion’s war diaries and other government archives, Flapan, former director of Arab affairs of Israel’s left-wing Mapam party, posits that the 1948 War of Independence was not an inevitability forced upon a helpless Israel. He maintains that the socialist Zionist leadership who accepted Ben-Gurion’s view that the Jewish state should be demographically homogeneous and geographically as extensive as possible not only encouraged and executed the expulsion of Palestinian Arabs but thwarted the creation of a Palestinian Arab state through a secret agreement with Abdallah of Transjordan. The annexation of the territory allocated for a Palestinian state was to be a first step in achieving Abdallah’s dream of a British-supported Greater Syria; and, according to Flapan, the Arab states aimed not at liquidating the Jewish state but at preventing the implementation of this agreement. This disturbing work bears witness to the futility, and unconscionability, of addressing political problems by military means.” – Publishers Weekly)

Gordon, Neve. Israel’s Occupation. Berkeley: University of California Press: 2008. (“What is most interesting in Gordon’s analysis is the way in which the renovation of occupation practices are identified as an immanent outcome of the ‘excesses and contradictions’ within the system itself.” – Times Higher Education / The website for Israel’s Occupation contains a vast assortment of reports, documents, and images dealing with the occupation.)

Hadawi, Sami. Bitter Harvest: A Modern History of Palestine. New York: Olive Branch Press, 1991. (“Sami Hadawi is a Palestinian scholar who was born in Jerusalem in 1904. He worked as the official land valuer during the British Mandate period in Palestine, and later for the Jordanian government and with the United Nations Palestine Conciliation Commission. He served in a number of Arab and Palestinian diplomatic positions. In 1965, he became Director of the new Institute of Palestine Studies in Beirut. Hadawi analyzes the people of ancient Palestine, through the years of British colonization; he examines the Jewish community and Zionism, the legacy of Jewish terror against both British and Palestinian targets. Later sections look at the role of the state of Israel, its treatment of Palestinians, and the emergence of the Palestine Liberation Organization. In the final chapter Hadawi covers the 1979 Camp David Accords, Israel’s invasion of Leabon in 1982, and the intifada of mid-1989.” – Olive Branch Press)

Halper, Jeff. An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel. London: Pluto Press, 2008. (“In this book, the Israeli anthropologist and activist Jeff Halper throws a harsh light on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the point of view of a critical insider. While the Zionist founders of Israel created a vibrant society, culture and economy, they did so at a high price: Israel could not maintain its exclusive Jewish character without imposing on the country’s Palestinian population policies of ethnic cleansing, occupation and discrimination, expressed most graphically in its ongoing demolition of thousands of Palestinian homes, both inside Israel and in the Occupied Territories.” – Pluto Press)

Halper, Jeff. Obstacles to Peace: a reframing of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. 4th ed. Jerusalem: ICAHD, 2009. (Halper is an Israeli anthropologist and Coordinator of the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions (ICAHD). With sixteen pages of colored maps this book documents Israel’s matrix of control of Palestine and gives an excellent analysis of the conflict with the following concluding chapters: “So where do we go from here?”, “Alternatives to a Two-State Solution”, and “Strategies of Action.” – CJPIP)

Hart, Alan. Zionism, the Real Enemy of the Jews. Vol. 1, False Messiah. Vol. 2, From David to Goliath. Vol. 3. Conflict Without End. Atlanta, GA: Clarity Press, 2009-2010. (These volumes, by the author of a biography of Yasser Arafat, are a strong indictment of Zionism with respect to its treatment of the indigenous Palestinian population. He quotes unclassified documents and sources not often cited in standard histories of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. – CJPIP)

Honig-Parnass, Tikva, The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2011. (“The Zionist Left, formerly hegemonic, has declined since 1977 and is now marginalized, while the differences between it and the center and Right have almost disappeared. But the myth of its ‘progressive’ nature persists among Western liberals. Based on her knowledge as a former insider [she fought in the 1948 war and served as the secretary of the then Radical Left Zionist Party of Mapam (The Unified Workers Party) in the Knesset (1951-1954)], and on her familiarity with the relevant material, Tikva Honig-Parnass performs an invaluable service in forensically deconstructing the myth.” – Moshé Machover)

Horowitz, Adam, Lizzy Ratner, Philip Weiss, eds. The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict. Asbury Park, NJ: Nation Books, 2011. (Starred Review. “American journalists Horowitz, Lizzy Ratner, and Philip Weiss provide a comprehensive picture of the 2009 Gaza conflict in this abridged version of the UN Fact-Finding Mission’s report on the Gaza Conflict commonly known as “the Goldstone Report.” Much more than a simple paring down of the controversial original document, which recounts human rights abuses committed by both Israel and Hamas, this edition is enhanced by oral testimonies and essays from experts following the report’s publication. . . An essential read for those concerned with accurate documentation of historical events and nations’ accountability for their treatment of civilians living in war zones. – Publishers Weekly)

Hroub, Khaled. Hamas: A Beginner’s Guide. New York: Pluto Press, 2006. (“’Hroub expertly answers every important question . . . concice, lucid and invaluable” – James Piscatori, Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies / “Hroub has written a lucid and extremely valuable introduction to this complex and often misunderstood organization.” – Sara Roy, Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard)

Khalidi, Rashid. Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. (“Winner of the 1997 Albert Hourani Book Award, Middle East Studies Assovciation. In this insightful book, Rashid Khalidi critically assesses the narratives that make up Palestinian history and identify and demonstrate how the Palestinian national consciousness has come full circle.” – Columbia University Press)

Khalidi, Rashid. The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006. (“Historian Khalidi (Resurrecting Empire), a leading expert on the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, brings vital perspective to Palestinian attempts to achieve independence and statehood. Admirably synthesizing the latest scholarship and concentrating on the period of the British Mandate (1920–1948) established by the League of Nations after WWI, Khalidi describes the process by which a newly arrived European Jewish minority overcame, with help from its imperial ally, the claims and rights of the native Arab majority in what became Israel and the occupied territories. Khalidi shows Palestinians under the mandate facing comparatively severe systemic, institutional and constitutional obstacles to the development of any para-state structure—contrary to British promises of Arab independence and Article 4 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. Meanwhile, the Jewish minority could count on a system biased in its favor to develop the structures that became those of the Israeli government in 1948 amid violent expulsion of over half the indigenous population. In bringing this narrative up to the present, Khalidi rigorously details the missteps of the Palestinians and their leadership. – Publishers Weekly)

Khalidi, Walid, ed. All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948. Washington, DC.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992. (“A fundamental research tool for all historians interested in the history of Palestine. A monumental effort … a major achievement.” –Roger Owen, The Middle East Centre, St. Antony’s College, Oxford University) A PDF of the introduction to All That Remains can be downloaded here.

Khalidi, Walid. Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History of the Palestinians, 1876 – 1948. WAshington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2nd edition, September 1991. (“”The most effective history of the Palestinians to appear in the U.S.” – Ambassador Andrew Killgore, Middle East Times) A PDF of the introduction to Before Their Diaspora can be downloaded here.

Khalidi, Walid. From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism and the Palestine Problem until 1948. Washington, Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2005. (An invaluable collections of maps, letters and documents chronicling the history of Zionism and its struggle with Palestinian nationalism. Captures both the Zionist and Palestinian narratives. – CJPIP)

King, Mary Elizabeth. Introduction by Jimmy Carter. A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance. New York, NY: Nation Books, 2007. (“A scholar of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience, King contends that the first Palestinian intifada (1987-1993) was explicitly peaceful from its inception….she draws on a wealth of documentary and statistical evidence to demonstrate that the Palestinians exercised remarkable restraint during the first years of the intifada. Tying together the threads of civil society, political mobilization and social change, she delivers a fascinating account of a nation in transition. In the occupied territories, she argues, the Israeli military brutally repressed the wedging open of nongovernmental political space and development of institutions not under official purview and deepened the Palestinians’ desire for change.” – Publishers Weekly)

Masalha, Nur. Expulsion of Palestinians: The Concept of “Transfer” in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948. Washington, Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992. (“Almost entirely based on declassified Israeli archival material, Dr. Masalha’s sober and carefully researched account shows conclusively that “transfers” — a euphemism for expulsion — was from the start an integral part of Zionism…(an) impressive and timely book…quietly devastating research.” – Rt. Hon. Lord Gilmour, The Guardian, UK) A PDF of the introduction to Expulsion of Palestinians can be downloaded here.

Masalha, Nur. The Palestine Nakba: Decolonising History, Narrating the Subaltern, Reclaiming Memory. London: Zed, 2004. (“Masalha argues that to write more truthfully about the Nakba is not just to practice a professional historiography but a moral imperative. The struggles of the ordinary refugees to publicize the truth about the Nakba is a vital way of protecting the refugees’ rights and keeping the hope for peace with justice alive. With the history, rights, and needs of the Palestinian refugees being excluded from recent Middle East peacemaking efforts and with the failure of both the Israeli state and international community to acknowledge the Nakba, “1948” as an “ethnic cleansing” continues to underpin the Palestine-Israel conflict. This book is vital for a real understanding of the Israel-Palestine conflict. – Zed )

Masalha, Nur, ed. Catastrophe Remembered: Palestine, Israel, and the Internal Refugees. London: Zed, 2005. (Essays in memory of Edward Said. “This is a work of enormous significance by distinguished scholars of singular courage and integrity. The spirit and legacy of Edward Said are embodied in these papers that seek to rectify grave historical omissions and distortions pertaining to the plight and rights of the Palestinians, particularly in their displacement and exile. Such a narrative of affirmation, authenticity, and rectification is the essential antidote to the mendacious accounts of exclusion and denial that have perpetuated, and even justified, the continued victimisation of the Palestinian nation. The recognition of this grievous injustice, along with the admission of Israeli and global culpability, are the first steps in the quest for a just peace and hence for historical redemption.” – Hanan Ashrawi) The forward and introduction to Catastrophe Remembered can be read here.

Morris, Benny. 1948 and After: Israel and the Palestinians. Revised and expanded. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. (“These essays by a leading Israeli historian focus on Israeli decisions and the reasons behind the mass Arab exile from Palestine in 1948. Benny Morris addresses the transfer of Majdal’s Arabs to Gaza in 1950, the initial absorption of the Palestinian refugees in Arab host countries in 1948-9, and why some Arabs remained in their villages. He then explores attitudes toward the Palestinian Arabs from the 1948 war to the differing perspectives of Israel’s two main parties. By examining past and present Israeli historiography, Morris identifies and analyzes the major points of controversy between the “old” official Israeli histories and the “new” histories of the 1980s and beyond.” – Oxford University Press.)

Morris, Benny. Israel’s Border Wars, 1949-1956. New York, NY: Oxford University Press-USA, 1997. (“[C]overs the seven-year period after the 1948 War, when the Jewish State fought to keep thousands of mostly unarmed Palestinians from returning to their homes and lands. The book also documents the war between the newly formed Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and the nascent Palestinian armed resistance movement then based in neighboring Jordan and Egypt. Border Wars is meticulously researched, using documents from government archives to present a most powerful argument refuting the myth of the of the IDF as “the world’s most moral army.” – Ira Glunts, Mondoweiss)

Morris, Benny. Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999. New York: Knopf, 1999. (“This is a first-class work of history, bringing together the latest scholarship. It is likely to stand as the most sophisticated and nuanced account of the Zionist-Arab conflict from its beginnings in the 1880s.” Ethan Bronner, New York Times Book Review)

Pappe, Ilan. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Oxford: Oneworld, 2007. [“(Pappe accuses) Israel of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, beginning in the 1948 war for independence and continuing through the present. Focusing primarily on Plan D (Dalet, in Hebrew), conceived on March 10, 1948, Pappe demonstrates how ethnic cleansing was not a circumstance of war, but rather a deliberate goal of combat for early Israeli military units organized by David Ben-Gurion, whom Pappe labels the “architect of ethnic cleansing.” The forced expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians between 1948 and 1949, Pappe argues, was part of a long-standing Zionist plan to manufacture an ethnically pure Jewish state. Framing his argument with accepted international and U.N. definitions of ethnic cleansing, Pappe follows with an excruciatingly detailed account of Israeli military involvement in the demolition and depopulation of hundreds of villages, and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Arab inhabitants. An accessible, learned resource, this volume provides important insights into the historical antecedents of today’s conflict, but its conclusions will not be easy for everyone to stomach: Pappe argues that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine continues today, and calls for the unconditional return of all Palestinian refugees and an end to the Israeli occupation.” – Publishers Weekly]

Peleg, Ilan. Human Rights in the West Bank and Gaza: Legacy and Politics. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1995. (“Ilan Peleg focuses on the status of human rights in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip until the early 1990s and evaluates the likely condition of human rights within a variety of possible solutions to the conflict. He approaches the Israeli-Palestinian dilemma from a human rights perspective and offers solutions within a human rights context. Massive violations of human rights, Peleg concludes, cannot be amended by a reform of the legal system but requires a more fundamental political change.” – Syracuse University Press)

Qumsiyeh, Mazin B. Popular Resistance in Palestine: A History of Hope and Empowerment. London: Pluto Press, 2011. (“The Western media paint Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation as exclusively violent: armed resistance, suicide bombings, and rocket attacks. In reality these methods are the exception to what is a peaceful and creative resistance movement. In this fascinating book, Dr Mazin Qumsiyeh synthesizes data from hundreds of original sources to provide the most comprehensive study of civil resistance in Palestine.” – Macmillan.)

Rogan, Eugene L. and Schlaim, Avi, eds. The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011. (“The official Israeli version of the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem has been challenged by, among other people, a group of Israeli scholars who are variably called the “new historians” or the “revisionists.” In this edited volume, Rogan and Shlaim, two prominent scholars of the modern Middle East at the University of Oxford, have brought together leading Israeli revisionist historians with noted Arab and Western scholars to explain the historical and contemporary significance of the 1948 War from various perspectives.”)

Roy, Sara. Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2007. (Sara Roy is Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Middle East Studies at Harvard University. Based on meticulous scholarship, Failing Peace is the definitive study of the economic and social crisis in Gaza. – CJPIP)

Sacher, Howard M. A History of Israel from The Rise of Zionism to Our Time. 2nd edition. New York: Knopf, 1998. (“A magnificent achievement” – The Times [London]; “We must blush that there does not exist in Hebrew so complete and all-embracing a history of the Jewish state” – Yediot Ahronot [Tel Aviv])

Sa’di, Ahmad H., ed. and Abu-Lughod, Lila, ed. Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory (Cultures of History). New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. (Ahmad H. Sa’di is a senior lecturer in the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University. Lila Abu-Lughod is professor of anthropology and gender studies at Columbia University. “[F]or Palestinians themselves, the iniquities of the present are experienced as a continuous replay of the injustice of the past. By focusing on memories of the Nakba or “catastrophe” of 1948, in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were dispossessed to create the state of Israel, the contributors to this volume illuminate the contemporary Palestinian experience and clarify the moral claims they make for justice and redress. The book’s essays consider the ways in which Palestinians have remembered and organized themselves around the Nakba, a central trauma that continues to be refracted through Palestinian personal and collective memory. Analyzing oral histories and written narratives, poetry and cinema, personal testimony and courtroom evidence, the authors show how the continuing experience of violence, displacement, and occupation have transformed the pre-Nakba past and the land of Palestine into symbols of what has been and continues to be lost.” – Columbia University Press)

Said, Edward. The Question of Palestine. New York: Vintage Books, 1992. (Edward Said, who died at the age of 67 in 2003 was Professor of English and Comparative University at Columbia University. In his preface Said writes, “But what is most important is the continuing avoidance or ignorance of the existence today of about four million Muslim and Christian Arabs who are known to themselves and to others as Palestinians. They make up the question of Palestine, and if there is no country called Palestine it is not because there are no Palestinians. There are, and this essay is an attempt to put their reality before the reader.” — p 5.)

Said, Edward and Christopher Hitchens, eds. Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question. New York: Verso, 1988. (“The aim of these exhaustive, detailed essays and book reviews is to highlight what Said, a professor at Columbia, calls in his introduction the “grotesque, almost parodistic garishness” of pro-Israeli, anti-Palestinian scholarship in the West, particularly in the U.S., where, he says, “it is as if even the narrative of Palestinian history is not tolerable.” In one piece, Said examines the reception of Joan Peters’s book, From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine, which argues that most of the Arabs in Palestine in 1948 were recent arrivals from other parts of the Arab world: despite widespread enthusiasm in the U.S., the book was greeted with embarrassed disavowal in Israel and a critical thrashing for shoddy methodology in Britain.” – Publishers Weekly)

Segev, Tom. English language editing by Arlen Neil Weinstein. 1949: The First Israelis. New York: First Owl Books, 2001. (“Segev is a well-known Israeli journalist with a degree in history from Boston University. This book, a translation from the original Hebrew, recounts the events during the first year of Israeli independence. The book is divided into four parts: “Between Jews and Arabs”; “Between Veterans and Newcomers”; “Between the Orthodox and the Secular”; “Between the Vision and Reality.” Based on unpublished official and personal records, it is an unsentimental and balanced view of life in Israel. It contains many new and often shocking revelations that will no doubt be upsetting to some. At the same time it is a highly interesting book of value to the general public and historians alike.” – Library Journal.)

Segev, Tom. 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007. (“Drawing on unpublished letters and diaries, as well as government memos and military records, Segev reconstructs an era of new possibilities and tragic missteps. . . . He reveals as never before Israel’s intimacy with the White House as well as the political rivalries that sabotaged any chance of peace. Above all, he challenges the view that the war was inevitable, showing that a series of disastrous miscalculations lie behind the bloodshed. – Metropolitan Books)

Segev, Tom. Translated by Haim Watzman. One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate. New York: First Owl Books, 2000.

Shlaim, Avi. Collusion Across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. (“Shlaim, an Oxford instructor in international relations, documents that Jordan’s ambitious, absolutist King Abdullah, who was assassinated in 1951, had clandestine ties with the Zionist movement in Israel, an accusation that many of the ruler’s cohorts have made in the past. To further his own aims of creating a greater Jordanian empire, Abdullah conducted secret diplomacy with David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir and other Israeli leaders. Drawing on Israeli government archives as well as interviews with politicians, soldiers and intelligence agents, Shlaim argues that the king’s self-serving maneuvers hastened the partition of Palestine, which left more than a million Palestinian Arabs without a homeland. His absorbing 686-page narrative, a major reevaluation of the Arab-Israeli conflict, unfolds an Arab world torn by internal rivalry not the monolithic, hostile bloc that some Israelis claim it to be.” – Publishers Weekly)

Shlaim, Avi. Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations. New York: Verso, 2010. (“. . . provides a realpolitik reading of the history, demolishing the heroic and innocent image of Israel in its relations with the Palestinians. – Foreign Affairs )

Shlaim, Avi and Eugene Rogan, eds. War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. (“In a preface to the new edition, the editors survey the state of scholarship in this contested field. The impact of these debates goes well beyond academia. There is an important link between the state of Arab-Israeli relations and popular attitudes towards the past. A more complex and fair-minded understanding of that past is essential for preserving at least the prospect of reconciliation between Arabs and Israel in the future. The rewriting of the history of 1948 thus remains a practical as well as an academic imperative.” – Cambridge University Press)

Smith, Charles. Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A History with Documents. 7th edition. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009.

Sternhell, Zeev. The Founding Myths of Israel: Nationalism, Socialism, and the Making of the Jewish State. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. (“The well-known historian and political scientist Zeev Sternhell here advances a radically new interpretation of the founding of modern Israel. The founders claimed that they intended to create both a landed state for the Jewish people and a socialist society. However, according to Sternhell, socialism served the leaders of the influential labor movement more as a rhetorical resource for the legitimation of the national project of establishing a Jewish state than as a blueprint for a just society. In this thought-provoking book, Sternhell demonstrates how socialist principles were consistently subverted in practice by the nationalist goals to which socialist Zionism was committed.” – Princeton University Press)

Zertal, Idith and Akiva Eldar. Lords of the Land: the War for Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007. New York: Nation Books, 2007 (“In the aftermath of the 1967 war and Israel’s devastating victory over its Arab neighbors, catastrophe struck both the soul and psyche of the state of Israel. Based on years of research, and written by one of Israel’s leading historians and journalists, this involving narrative focuses on the settlers themselves — often fueled by messianic zeal but also inspired by the original Zionist settlers — and shows the role the state of Israel has played in nurturing them through massive economic aid and legal sanctions. The occupation, the authors argue, has transformed the very foundations of Israel’s society, economy, army, history, language, moral profile, and international standing. ‘The vast majority of the 6.5 million Israelis who live in their country do not know any other reality,’ the authors write. ‘The vast majority of the 3.5 million Palestinians who live in the regions of their occupied land do not know any other reality.’” – Nation Books.)

Zochrot. Omrim Yshna Eretz — Once Upon a Land­: A Tour Guide. Hebrew and Arabic. Haifa: Pardes Publications, 2012. (“[A] bilingual tour guide, in Hebrew and Arabic, to what is left and – mainly – what was erased, almost without a trace. A journey through time and consciousness, 18 tours to some of the approximately 400 Palestinian villages and urban neighborhoods, whose residents fled or were expelled in 1948. Most of their homes were wiped off the face of the earth immediately afterward, generally without even a sign remaining of them.” – Gideon Levy / Also see the description by Zochrot as well as the book review by the Human Rights Education Director of Amnesty International Israel. )

Arms/Arms Trade

Beit-Hallahmi, Benjamin. The Israeli Connection: Whom Israel Arms and Why. London, New York: I. B. Tauris, 1987. (“A masterful account of how Israel’s determination to survive aligns it with some of the most repressive regimes of our time.” – I. B. Tauris.)

Cohen, Avner. Israel and the Bomb. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. (“Until now, there has been no detailed account of Israel’s nuclear history. Previous treatments of the subject relied heavily on rumors, leaks, and journalistic speculations. But with Israel and the Bomb, Avner Cohen has forged an interpretive political history that draws on thousands of American and Israeli government documents — most of them recently declassified and never before cited — and more than one hundred interviews with key individuals who played important roles in this story. Cohen reveals that Israel crossed the nuclear weapons threshold on the eve of the 1967 Six-Day War, yet it remains ambiguous about its nuclear capability to this day. What made this posture of “opacity” possible, and how did it evolve? Cohen focuses on a two-decade period from about 1950 until 1970, during which David Ben-Gurion’s vision of making Israel a nuclear-weapon state was realized.” – Columbia University Press)

Cohen, Avner. The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain with the Bomb. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. (“Israel has made a unique contribution to the nuclear age. It has created a special ‘bargain’ with the bomb. Israel is the only nuclear-armed state that does not acknowledge its possession of the bomb, even though its existence is a common knowledge throughout the world. It only says that it will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East. The bomb is Israel’s collective ineffable – the nation’s last great taboo. This bargain has a name: in Hebrew, it is called amimut, or opacity. By adhering to the bargain, which was born in a secret deal between Richard Nixon and Golda Meir, Israel has created a code of nuclear conduct that encompasses both governmental policy and societal behavior. The bargain has deemphasized the salience of nuclear weapons, yet it is incompatible with the norms and values of a liberal democracy. It relies on secrecy, violates the public right to know, and undermines the norm of public accountability and oversight, among other offenses. It is also incompatible with emerging international nuclear norms.” – Columbia University Press)

Ruebner, Josh. U.S. Military Aid to Israel: Policy Implications and Options. Washington, DC: US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, 2012. [40 pp.; downloadable at http://aidtoisrael.org/section.php?id=400 ] (“[E]stablishes the legal, political, economic, strategic and human rights rationale for ending $30 billion of U.S. taxpayer-financed weapons transfers to Israel from 2009 to 2018.” – US Campaign)

Shahak, Israel. Israel’s Global Role: Weapons for Repression. Introduction by Noam Chomsky. Belmont, Mass.: Association of Arab-American University Graduates, 1982. (“A pathbreaking study of the relations of the Israeli state with repressive governments around the world, with a special emphasis on arms sales. Drawing primarily from the Hebrew press, Professor Israel Shahak of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem documents Israeli support of such governments as the junta in El Salvador, Somoza’s Nicaragua, South Africa, and the Shah’s Iran.” – AAUG)

Shahak, Israel. Open Secrets: Israeli Foreign and Nuclear Policies. London: Pluto Press, 1997. (“‘Shahak has the courage to to say what most Israelis do not dare to say and definitely do not want to hear … [He] is a knowledgeable insider who builds his argument carefully on the best information … The lessons to be drawn from what Shahak tells us are self-evident.’ – London Review Of Books)

Smith, Grant F. Divert!: NUMEC, Zalman Shapiro and the diversion of US weapons grade uranium into the Israeli nuclear weapons program, Washington, DC: Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, 2012. (“Based on an exhaustive review of formerly classified government documents – as well as previously unexplored corporate filings, office diaries and unguarded interviews – Grant F. Smith has written a riveting story of the 1960s diversion of US weapons-grade nuclear material from an Israeli front company in Pennsylvania into the clandestine Israeli atomic weapons program. The talented but highly conflicted founder of the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC)-Dr. Zalman Mordecai Shapiro alongside his close friend and financial backer David Lowenthal-engaged in a ferocious clandestine drive to funnel the most valuable military material on earth…” – IRmep)

Ploakow-Suransky, Sasha. The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa. New York: Pantheon, 2010. (“This is a major, long overdue study of the rise and demise of one of the most intriguing alliances of our time, Israel’s hidden partnership with white South Africa. Dr. Polakow-Suransky has written a masterfully researched history that reads like a thriller unraveling the secrets of an alliance between two embattled societies under siege. Weaved into the author’s fascinating narrative lies the disturbing debate about the degree of moral end political congruence that might have existed between the two allies, Israel’s political and defense establishment on the one hand and the Afrikaner ‘master race’ on the other.” — Shlomo Ben-Ami, Foreign Minister of Israel, 2000-2001)

Memoirs/Novels

Abu-Sharif, Bassam and Uzi Mahnaimi.The Best of Enemies: The Memoirs of Bassam Abu-Sharif & Uzi Mahnaimi. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1995. (“If each of these authors had published separate autobiographies, the results would have been compelling. Told contrapuntally, their stories make more gripping reading than most adventure novels. The fact that these men are of a similar age and have lived through the same events often in the same locations enables the reader to view Middle East history of the last 50 years from an astonishingly broad perspective.” – CPT)

Arrigoni, Vittorio. Gaza: Stay Human. Leicestershire: Kube Publishing, 2010. (“During the Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip in 2008-9, Arrigoni acted as a human shield while working with the Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances. Working as a freelance journalist for the Italian daily, Il Manifesto, Arrigoni’s daily dispatches, written between bombing raids and patchy internet access, ended with the plea, ‘stay human’, which became the motto of the anti-Israeli peace protests in his native Italy. His authoritative and deeply-moving eyewitness account was later published in 2010 in Italian, French, German and English, which the historian Ilan Pappé described as the ‘account of an everyman and a true humanist’.” – Kube)

Bing, Anthony. Israeli Pacifist: The Life of Joseph Abileah. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990. (“For more than 50 years, Joseph Abileah, a violinist from Haifa, has worked for reconciliation between Arabs & Jews….This life of an Israeli pacifist is also a study of an alternative history of Israel, one that reflects the tensions between spiritual & political Zionism.” – Publishers Weekly)

Chacour, Elias. Foreward by James A Baker III. Blood Brothers: The Unforgettable Story of a Palestinian Christian Working for Peace in Israel. Royal Oak: Chosen, 2003.

Chacour, Elias and Mary Jensen. We Belong to the Land: The Story of a Palestinian israeli Who Lives for Peace and Reconciliation. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001. (“The conflict of being a clergyman and a Palestinian Arab in Israel forms the backdrop for this human drama as the author, a priest in the Melkite Catholic Church, tries to serve as a spokesperson for fellow Palestinians against what they perceive as injustices imposed on them by a Jewish state. Among the travails he relates are the destruction of his village in the Upper Galilee by Israeli authorities, who transformed the area into a military security zone; and the forced evacuation of Biram, another village in the Galilee.” – Library Journal)

Habibi, Emile. The Secret Life of Saeed: the Pessoptimist. Northhampton, MA: Interlink World Fiction Series, 1974. (Satirical novel about a Palestinian citizen of Israel and his transformation from a naïve and gullible collaborator into a Palestinian. – CJPIP)

Johnson, Penny and Raja Shehadeh, Eds. Seeking Palestine: New Palestinian Writing on Exile and Home. New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2012. (“[A]n extraordinarily frank, fresh and unsentimental assessment of what Palestinians are and have become. It is not only a testimony as to the strength, dedication and sticking power of Palestinian people, but also of the writers themselves. It is a book not just of ideas and bearing witness, but a catalogue of astonishing characters…” – Selma Dabbagh, ei.)

Kanaaneh, Hatim. Doctor in Galilee: The Life and Struggle of a Palestinian in Israel. London: Pluto Press, 2008. (“Hatim Kanaaneh is a Palestinian doctor who has struggled for over 35 years to bring medical care to Palestinians in Galilee, against a culture of anti-Arab discrimination. This is the story of how he fought for the human rights of his patients and overcame the Israeli authorities’ cruel indifference to their suffering. Kanaaneh is a native of Galilee, born before the creation of Israel. He left to study medicine at Harvard, before returning to work as a public health physician with the intention of helping his own people. He discovered a shocking level of disease and malnutrition in his community and a shameful lack of support from the Israeli authorities. After doing all he could for his patients by working from inside the system, Kanaaneh set up The Galilee Society, an NGO working for equitable health, environmental and socio-economic conditions for Palestinian Arabs in Israel.” – Pluto Press)

Kanafani, Ghassan. Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories. Denver: Lynne Riemer Publishers, 1999. (Men in the Sun is a novel detailing in an allegorical fashion the tragedy of the Palestinian people after the dispossession of their land. Written by an activist /artist who was assassinated in 1972, this story and the others in the collection have become a classic example for Palestinians of their struggle for freedom and return to their homeland. – CJPIP)

Karmi, Ghada. In Search of Fatima. New York: Verso, 2002.

Khalifeh, Sahar. Wild Thorns. Vancouver, WA: Olive Branch Press, 1976, 2005. in English. (Set in the Occupied West bank, this story tells the history of a resistance fighter living among citizens of Nablus who have been beaten down by the weight of the occupation. – CJPIP)

Nathan, Susan. The Other Side of Israel: My Journey Across the Jewish/Arab Divide. New York, NY: Nan A. Talese, 2005. (“Almost invisible in the international media, the Arab citizens of Israel have found very few advocates among Israel’s Jewish majority. By leaving Tel Aviv and moving into an Arab village, Nathan began the personal transformation that made her one of that small number. Living among Arab Israelis has engendered in Nathan a keen awareness of their fortitude and courage in coping with the adversity imposed by Israeli policies and practices. In Israel’s schools and its legislative chamber, on its farms and its job sites, Nathan sees Jewish Israelis denying Arab Israelis equitable treatment, relegating them to second-class citizenship. And, unfortunately, the unmistakable parallels with South African apartheid fail to register even in the minds of Israel’s progressive Jews, who insist that Israel’s Arabs must surrender their traditional culture before they qualify for equal rights…. Nathan’s concluding appeal for a truly equitable and inclusive Israel will stir sharp controversy by forcing hard questions.” – American Library Association: Booklist)

Netanyahu, Benjamin. A Durable Peace: Israel and Its Place Among the Nations. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2000

Olson, Pamela. Fast Times in Palestine. New York: Mason Hill Press, 2011. (“It’s love in the time of occupation as Pamela Olson . . . takes us on the emotional roller-coaster of her very personal experience of life in Ramallah — and in doing so lays bare the human drama of a people . . . determined to live free.” – Tony Karon, Senior Editor, Time)

Oz, Amos. The Black Box. New York: Vintage, 1989. (This epistolary novel is the story of Ilana, her two husbands and her son Boaz. Her husbands represent the secular/religious conflict in contemporary Israel and her son becomes an interesting symbol of a possible brighter future for Israel. – CJPIP)

Peres, Shimon. The New Middle East. New York: Henry Holt, 2003.

Raheb, Mitri. Bethlehem Besieged: Stories of Desperation and Hope from the Holy Land. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2004. (“This is a heartrending account of what has happened to ordinary people, and how they have lived and survived (in) Bethlehem, the birthplace of the Prince of Peace. It should shake us out of complicity with the injustice being visited on ordinary people.” – Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa)

Shehadeh, Raja. Samed: A Journal of a West Bank Palestinian. New York: Adama Books, 1984. (“Shehadeh brings the Catch-22 situation of the West Bank to life. This slim and readable book is the best I’ve read so far on what Palestinians living in the West Bank have to cope with on a day to day basis. Highly recommended.” – CPT)

Shulman, David. Dark Hope: Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. (“Beautifully written and emphatic in its calm insistence on the need to take both responsibility and action, Dark Hope is notable not just for the bleak picture it paints of the nightmare that the settlers and their sponsors, the Israeli government, have brought to millions of Palestinians but also, as its title suggests, for the faith it places in a basic human decency and in the belief that there must be another way” – Adina Hoffman, The Nation)

Wagner, Donald. Anxious for Armageddon: A Call to Partnership for Middle Eastern and Western Christians. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 1995.

Walker, Alice. Overcoming Speechlessness: A Poet Encounters the Horror in Rwanda, Eastern Congo, and Palestine/Israel. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2010. (“In 2006 Alice Walker, working with Women for Women International, visited Rwanda and the eastern Congo to witness the aftermath of the genocide in Kigali. Invited by Code Pink, an antiwar group working to end the Iraq War, Walker traveled to Palestine/Israel three years later to view the devastation on the Gaza Strip. Here is her testimony.” – Seven Stories Press.)

Winternitz, Helen. A Season of Stones: Living in a Palestinian Village. New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991.(“Winternitz chronicles the months she spent living in the Palestinian village of Nahalin during the Intifada. While the 21st chapter is the most dramatic, detailing as it does a massacre of villagers by the border police, what struck me was her description of the slow strangulation of the village by surrounding settlements – something that still continues as of this writing.” – CPT)

Bayoumi, Mustafa, ed. Midnight on the Mavi Marmara: The Attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and How It Changed the Course of the Israel/Palestine Conflict. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2010. (“[A] range of activists, journalists, and analysts piece together the events that occurred that May night. Mixing together first-hand testimony and documentary record with hard-headed analysis and historical overview, Midnight on the Mavi Marmara reveals why the attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla may just turn out to be Israel’s Selma, Alabama moment . . . ” – Haymarket Books)

Christison, Kathleen and Bill Christison. Palestine in Pieces: Graphic Perspectives on the Israeli Occupation. London: Pluto Press, 2009. “This book brings personal and pictorial perspectives to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. Former CIA political analysts Kathleen and Bill Christison give a comprehensive description of the occupation and the ways in which Israel dominates the Palestinians: Israeli settlements, the Separation Wall, roads restricted to cars with Israeli license plates, home demolitions on a massive scale, imprisonment, mass assassinations and wanton sniper and artillery fire. With more than 50 photographs vividly demonstrating the impact of the occupation on the Palestinian people, the authors argue that Israel’s long-term intention is to so fragment the occupied territories that any sustainable presence in the land by Palestinians as a nation will be negated.” – Pluto Press.)

Cook, Jonathan. Blood and Religion: the unmasking of the Jewish and democratic state. London: Pluto Press, 2006. [A former staff journalist of the Guardian and Observer newspapers, Cook continues to report on the status of the Israeli Arabs from his home in Nazareth. In this book Cook documents how Israel is treating its Arab minority with its numerical growth by developing and reinforcing “an image of the minority as an irredentist population group, an enemy trying to subvert the Jewish state from within on behalf of the Palestinians in the occupied territories.” (Preface, p. xii)] – CJPIP)

Cypel, Sylvain. Walled: Israeli society at an impasse. New York: Other Press, 2006. (Cypel, a French Jew, is senior editor at Le Monde. Cypel in this book explains how Israel’s security motives win out “almost every time over the understanding of what was really at stake, and hence over the search for political compromise.” – p. 81)

Dunsky, Marda. Pens and Swords: How the Mainstream American Media Report the Israel-Palestine Conflict. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. (“[Dunsky’s] writing is perceptive and her arguments insightful” – Jewish Book World)

El-Haddad, Laila. Gaza Mom: Palestine, Politics, Parenting, and Everything In Between. Charlottsville, VA: Just World Books, 2010. (“[Gaza Mom] takes us into the life and world of a busy Palestinian journalist who is both covering the story of Gaza and living it—very intensely. This book is El-Haddad’s self-curated choice of the best of her writings from December 2004 through July 2010. She was in Gaza City in 2005, watching hopefully as the Israelis prepared their withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. She covered the January 2006 Palestinian elections—judged ‘free and fair’ by all international monitors. But then, she watched aghast as the Israeli government, backed by the Bush administration, moved in to punish Gaza’s 1.5 million people for the way they had voted by throwing a tough siege around the Strip….El-Haddad was not only covering Gaza’s situation as a journalist and correspondent. She was also living them, including by trying to explain the ongoing events to her own young children.” – Just World)

Fisk, Robert. Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War. Cambridge: Oxford University Press, October 2001. (“Pity the Nation ranks among the classic accounts of war in our time, both as historical document and as an eyewitness testament to human savagery. Written by one of Britain’s foremost journalists, this remarkable book combines political analysis and war reporting in an unprecedented way: it is an epic account of the Lebanon conflict by an author who has personally witnessed the carnage of Beirut for over a decade. Fisk’s book recounts the details of a terrible war but it also tells a story of betrayal and illusion, of Western blindness that had led inevitably to political and military catastrophe. Updated and revised, Fisk’s book gives us a further insight into this troubled part of the world. ‘Robert Fisk is one of the outstanding reporters of this generation. As a war correpondent he is unrivalled.” Edward Mortimer, Financial Times” – Amazon book description)

Gilberts, Mads and Erik Fosse. Eyes in Gaza. London: Quartet Books: 2010. (“Eyes in Gaza is a detailed and harrowing account by the Norwegian doctors Mads Gilbert and Erik Fosse of their experiences in al-Shifa Hospital during Israel’s deadly assault on Gaza in December 2008-January 2009. For a time, they were not just the only western doctors in Gaza, but among the handful of western witnesses to what they repeatedly call Israel’s “massacre” of some 1,400 Palestinian men, women and children. Hence the book’s title, bearing witness to their status as witnesses.” – Raymond Deane)

Hass, Amira. Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege. New York: Picador, 2000. (“The author lived in the Gaza Strip and personally observed the events she so eloquently relates in this highly readable and lucid book. She describes in agonizing detail the hardship and deprivation experienced by ordinary Palestinians as they live their lives under Israeli rule. As the author points out, the unrelenting difficulties and humiliations experienced by ordinary Palestinians have not changed since the Oslo peace process and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Stories and moving testimonials gathered by the author add a much-needed human dimension to the Palestinian tragedy. Highly recommended for all readers interested in the future of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process.” – Library Journal)

Hass, Amira. Reporting from Ramallah: An Israeli Journalist in an Occupied Land. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e); illustrated edition, 2003. (“Culled from her dispatches during the past five years, these pieces offer a three-dimensional portrait of the daily experiences of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation. The early pieces, written while serious peace talks were being conducted in the late ’90s, shows the roots of the current violence: most notably, Palestinians’ frustration that the Oslo peace accords hadn’t produced many tangible results. As Hass presciently wrote: ‘The distance from here to private and collective acts of despair is not great.’ As the book wends its way through the outbreak of violence in September 2000, that despair is increasingly on display. Her pieces illustrate how Palestinian frustration-over detentions, house demolitions, a life so riddled with restrictions that ‘hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are criminals or potential criminals’ – erupted into suicide bombings and other forms of terrorism.” – Publishers Weekly)

Karmi, Ghada. Married to Another Man: Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine. London: Pluto Press, 2007. (“The demise of the two-state solution makes Ghada Karmi’s work a compelling read. . .Her bold vision of a single egalitarian state for Palestinians and Israelis is the only way to break the current log jam and bring an end to Apartheid Israel.” – Dr Nur Masalha, Reader in Religion and Politics, Director of the Centre for Religion and History and of the Holy Land Research Project, St Mary’s University College, University of Surrey)

King, Mary Elizabeth. A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance. New York, NY: Nation Books, 2007. (“A scholar of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience, King contends that the first Palestinian intifada (1987-1993) was explicitly peaceful from its inception…she draws on a wealth of documentary and statistical evidence to demonstrate that the Palestinians exercised remarkable restraint during the first years of the intifada…In the occupied territories, she argues, the Israeli military brutally repressed the wedging open of nongovernmental political space and development of institutions not under official purview…” – Reed Elsevier)

Knopf-Newman, Mary Jane. The Politics of Teaching Palestine to Americans: Addressing Pedagogical Strategies. Hampshire, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. (“…Knopf-Newman exposes how language and history have obscured the reality of Palestinians, which has been suppressed in the United States. This brilliant and important work is instructive in every sense of the word.” – J. Kehaulani Kauanui, Associate Professor of American Studies and Anthropology, Wesleyan University)

Levy, Gideon. The Punishment of Gaza. London: Verso, 2010. (“. . . Gideon Levy is a prominent Israeli journalist. For over twenty years he has covered the Israel–Palestine conflict, in particular the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz in his column “Twilight Zone. – Verso)

Qumsiyeh, Mazin B. Popular Resistance in Palestine: A History of Hope and Empowerment. London: Pluto Press, 2011. (“Qumsiyeh’s inspiring accounts of both the everyday and the most extraordinary acts of Palestinian indigenous resistance to colonialism expose the misguided claims that Palestinians have never tried nonviolence; in fact, they are among the experts, whose courage, creativity, and resilience are an inspiration to people of conscience everywhere.” – Anna Baltzer; “[T]his is a work of enormous significance….a must read for anyone interested in justice and how to produce the necessary breakthrough in the Israel-Palestine conflict.” – Nur Masalha.)

Raviv, Dan and Melman, Yossi. Every Spy a Prince: The Complete History of Israel’s Intelligence Community. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. (“Basing their work on interviews with former operatives and on declassified documents, CBS news correspondent Raviv and Israeli journalist Melman here produce a revealing critical history of the rise and decline of Israel’s vaunted security and intelligence arm, from the idealistic pioneering days to the current disarray in the face of the Palestinian intifada and the shocking vulnerability of the intelligence community to material corruption.” – Publishers Weekly)

Reinhart, Tanya. Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002. (“Israeli journalist Tanya Reinhart provides a primer on the current Israeli/Palestinian crisis. She details the roots of the conflict, presents compelling evidence that Israel has been working to undermine the 1993 Oslo peace agreement, and discusses how the crisis is linked to America’s war on terrorism.” – Seven Stories Press)

Reporters Without Borders. Israel/Palestine: The Black Book. London: Pluto Press, 2003. (“[T]he nonpartisan international organization of journalists Reporters without Borders presents a shocking compilation of reports on the human rights violations that have occurred in Israel and Palestine since the second intifada began in 2000. The reports, which are drawn from Israeli, Palestinian and international human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, contain individual case histories as well as general overviews. The Israeli group B’Tselem, for example, describes the demolition of houses along the Egyptian border, while the Palestinian Center for Human Rights documents the Palestinian Authority’s attacks on the free press. Other topics include the behavior of Israeli soldiers during demonstrations and at checkpoints, the shortcomings of the Palestinian justice system, the killings committed by Palestinians and the use of torture in Israel. The book makes for sobering reading, but, as the editors write, “Terrorism does not justify torture. Colonial oppression does not justify terrorism.” And the first step to stopping such crimes is to acknowledge that they have occurred.” – Publishers Weekly)

Sacco, Joe. Footnotes in Gaza. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009. (“Having already established his reputation as the world’s leading comics journalist, Sacco (Safe Area Gorazde) is now making a serious case to be considered one of the world’s top journalists, period. His newest undertaking is a bracing quest to uncover the truth about what happened in two Gaza Strip towns in 1956, when aftershocks from the Sinai campaign may have resulted in the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli military. Sacco first came across the stories during research in 2001 and was shocked to discover that, but for one brief mention, the incidents had never been fully investigated. The resulting book is a blow-by-blow retelling of how Sacco, on the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, embedded himself in Gaza and set about interviewing every witness he could find who had been in the towns of Khan Younis and Rafah on those fateful days. Sacco’s art is alternately epic and intimate, but he exceeds himself in the scope of his ambition (particularly in one sequence that shows in vivid terms how desert refugee camps from 1948 turned into the teeming slums of today.”– Publishers Weekly)

Sacco, Joe. Palestine. Seattle: Fantagraphic Books, 2001. (“In late 1991 and early 1992, Joe Sacco spent two months with Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, traveling and taking notes. Upon returning to the United States in mid-1992, he started writing and drawing Palestine, which combines the techniques of eyewitness reportage with the medium of comic-book storytelling . . . . The nine-issue comic series won a 1996 American book award.” – Fantagraphic Books)

Stohlman, Nancy and Aladin, Laurieann. Live from Palestine: International and Palestinian Direct Action Against the Israeli Occupation. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2003. (“This book tells two stories that have become intertwined in the Middle East: the Palestinians who, tired of waiting for U.N. peacekeepers, have called upon the world’s activists for protection, and the people who are putting their lives on the line answering that call. Together these Americans, Palestinians, Israelis, and Europeans are making a non-violent, grassroots attempt to challenge the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.” – South End.)

Stone, I.F. Underground to Palestine and Reflections Thirty Years Later. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. (“I.F. Stone always confessed to a ‘weakness for refugees’ and was wary of the implications of world indifference to their plight. In the epilogue … he returns to this theme, this time relating the plight of the Palestinians to the future of Israel.” – Pantheon Books)

White, Ben. Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination and Democracy. London: Pluto Press, 2011. (“This book debunks convincingly and forcefully the myth of Israel being ‘the only democracy’ in the Middle East. As this book shows, the treatment of the Palestinians in Israel is the ultimate proof that the Jewish State is anything but democratic.” – Professor Ilan Pappe, University of Exeter)

U.S. Involvement

Aruri, Naseer. Dishonest Broker: the US Role in Israel and Palestine. Cambridge: South End Press, 2003. (“Aruri analyzes the evolving relationship between the United States and the two protagonists – the Palestinians and Israel – and argues that the U.S. rejectionist policy toward Palestinian participation and Palestinian rights has become a policy that focuses more on the process and than on peace. Aruri argues that the special relationship between the United States and Israel turned into a strategic alliance after the war in 1967 – ruling out a role of honest brokering for the United States – all other would-be peacemakers and facilitators were held at bay. The U.S. diplomatic-monopoly continues to serve as the single most effective means to accomplish Israel’s goals. It sustains Israel, protecting it from international scrutiny, and engineers the gridlock that allows the Israeli government to negotiate indefinitely. – South End Press)

Boyle, Francis. Palestine, Palestinians, and International Law. Clarity Press, 2009. (“This book provides a comprehensive survey of the international legal principles related to the Palestinian struggle for self-determination . . . . During the past two decades, the author has provided the leadership of the Palestinian people with advice, counsel, and representation at all stages of this process. The scholarly analyses that he used to back up this critical work can be found in the pages of this book. Another chapter analyzes the hypocrisy and double-standards behind the Bush Jr. administration’s bogus ‘war on international terrorism,’ with special reference to U.S. foreign policy towards the Middle East and the Muslim World after 11 September 2001. The concluding chapter provides advice and guidance to the international grassroots Campaign for Israeli Divestment/Disinvestment, which were all inspired by the author’s involvement in the original Divestment/Disinvestment Campaign against the former criminal apartheid regime in South Africa.” – Clarity Press)

Christison, Kathleen. Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on U.S. Middle East Policy. Updated Edition with a New Afterword. 1999. (“[A] masterful treatise on how it is that the United States managed to ignore the Palestinians for a century.” – Donald Neff, Journal of Palestine Studies)

Chomsky, Noam. Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians. Foreward by Edward Said. Updated Edition. Cambridge: South End Press, 1999. (“Chomsky’s seminal tome on Mideast politics has become a classic in the fields of political science and Mideast affairs. For its tenth printing, Chomsky has added chapters bringing the book completely up to date, with a new preface by Chomsky, a new foreword from Palestinian author and activist Edward W. Said, and new material on the Intifada, the ongoing Israeli-PLO “peace process” (including the Oslo and Wye accords), and Israel’s war against Lebanon.” – South End Press)

Finkelstein, Norman. Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. 2nd edition. New York: Verso, 2003. (“First published in 1995, this highly acclaimed study scrutinizes popular and scholarly representations of the Israel-Palestine conflict. It begins with a novel theoretical inter-pretation of Zionism, and then moves on to critically engage the influential studies of Joan Peters, Benny Morris, and Anita Shapira. Carefully rehearsing the documentary record, Finkelstein also challenges the dominant images of the June 1967 and October 1973 Arab-Israeli wars. In a comprehensive new introduction, he provides the most succinct overview available in the English language of the Israel-Palestine conflict, while in several new chapters he juxtaposes Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories against South African apartheid, and demolishes the scholarly pretensions of Michael Oren’s recent bestseller on the June 1967 war.” – Verso)

Gallagher, Nancy. Quakers in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Dilemmas of NGO Humanitarian Activism. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2007. “When war broke out in Palestine in 1948, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker service organization, had just won the Nobel Peace Prize for its peacemaking endeavors and its service to war refugees during the Second World War. On the basis of that experience, the United Nations invited the highly visible AFSC to provide humanitarian relief to Arab refugees in Gaza. The AFSC also sent volunteers to work in Israel, where they hoped to serve both Arabs and Jews. Its long-term goal was repatriation of the refugees and conciliation and coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. As eyewitnesses to some of the major events of the conflict, the AFSC volunteers came to understand it better than most outsiders at the time. By examining these early efforts at peacemaking and assistance, historian Nancy Gallagher has uncovered essential insights for today’s peacemakers, human rights activists, and humanitarian NGOs.” – AUCP)

Green, Stephen. Living by the Sword: America and Israel in the Middle East 1968-87. Brattleboro, VT: Amana Books, 1988.(“Israel’s relationship with the United States lies at the heart of the Middle East conflict. Not only does American largesse underpin Israel’s immense military power, and hence unyielding attitude, but it may be the key to any compromise….Rather than offering a detailed chronological narrative, the book focuses on particular episodes involving the two countries.” – Andrew Gilmour, Journal of Palestine Studies)

Green, Stephen. Taking Sides: America’s Secret Relations with a Militant Israel. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1984. (“The author has burrowed with a prosecutor’s diligence into unpublished American archives. The book has been and will be praised by those who believe the United States has damaged its own security, and Israel’s too, by uncritical and often secret support of Israel’s actions, no matter how extreme. Those who believe that American support has not gone far enough and that American and Israeli interests are identical will sputter with indignation.” – John C. Campbell, Foreign Affairs)

Knopf-Newman, Marcy Jane. The Politics of Teaching Palestine to Americans: Addressing Pedagogical Strategies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. (“For decades, the question of Palestine has been the third rail in American academia and public discourse. Where there ought to be vital discussion, there has too often been silence, fear and intimidation of those who question official Israeli history, or unconditional US support for Israel. Knopf-Newman’s essential book tackles this issue head on, breaking taboos and providing educators and general readers with real tools to understand the history of Palestine and how we talk about it.” – Ali Abunimah)

Quigley, John. Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice. Durham: Duke University Press, 1990. (“Quigley argues that the Zionist movement that established Israel did so by violating many of the conventions and agreements of international law. Ultimately, Quigley claims, the Palestinians who lost the opportunity for statehood hold good legal title to that territory.” – Duke University Press)

Rubenberg, Cheryl A. Israel and the American National Interest: A Critical Examination. Urbana; Chicago: The University of Illinois Press, 1986. (“The single most satisfactory scholarly study, by far, of the U.S.-Israeli relationship. It represents a major contribution to our knowledge and understanding of one of the most sensitive and important areas of U.S. foreign policy.” – Richard Falk)

Mearsheimer, John J. and Stephen M. Walt. The Israeli Lobby and U. S. Foreign Policy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. (Mearsheimer who is on the faculty of the University of Chicago and Walt who is on the faculty of Harvard University, describe how the Israeli lobby affects U.S. foreign policy’s pro-Israel direction that is damaging to both America’s national interests and Israel’s security. – CJPIP)

Christian and Jewish Involvement

Anderson, Irvine. Biblical Interpretation and Middle East Policy: The Promised Land, America, and Israel, 1917-2002. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2005. (“[An] important and timely topic: the influence of Biblical imagery and Christian messianic hopes on the shaping of British and American policy in the Middle East. . . . Anderson is a careful and judicious historian who presents a balanced and well-nuanced account.” – Yaakov Ariel, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)

Ateek, Naim. A Palestinian Christian Cry for Reconciliation. New York: Orbis Books, 2008. (“This sequel to Justice and Only Justice is divided into three parts. The first part focuses on events since the Intifada of 1987…. The second part of the book draws on scripture, raising up biblical figures such as Samson, Jonah, Daniel, and Jesus as it examines issues of ownership of the land. In the final section, Ateek presents a strategy to achieve peace and justice nonviolently that will promote justice for the Palestinians and security for both Israel and Palestine.” – Orbis Books)

Ateek, Naim, Marc Ellis, Rosemary Ruether, eds. Faith and the Intifada: Palestinian Christian Voices. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1995. (“This book represents, in part, papers that were given at the First International Symposium on Palestinian Liberation Theology at Tantur, between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, during March 10-17, 1990. – Rosemary Reuther.)

Ateek, Naim, Rosemary Ruether, eds. Justice and Only Justice: A Palestinian Theology of Liberation. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1989. (“This captivating bestseller by a clergyman and leader of the Palestine Christian community examines the problems and prospects for Palestinians, Jews, and Christians in the Middle East.” – Orbis Books)

Braverman, Mark. Fatal Embrace: Christians, Jews and the Search for Peace in the Holy Land. Austin: Synergy Books, 2010. (“Braverman explains how the Jewish yearning for safety and self determination and the Christian effort to atone for centuries of anti-Jewish persecution have combined to suppress the conversations urgently needed to bring about peace in historic Palestine.” – Synergy Books)

Burge, Gary. Whose Land? Whose Promise? What Christians Are Not Being Told about Israel and the Palestinians. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2004.

Clark, Victoria. Allies for Armageddon: The Rise of Christian Zionism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. (“Clark engages with Christian Zionism directly, interviewing leaders, attending events, and traveling with Christian Zionists in the Holy Land. She also investigates the Christian Zionist presence in Israel….Clark concludes with an assessment of Christian Zionists’ impact on American foreign policy in the Middle East and on America’s relationships with European allies since the attacks of 9/11. – Yale Press)

Flesher, LeAnn Snow. Left Behind? The Fact Behind the Fiction. Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 2006. (“Flesher presents a careful, well-informed comment on dispensationalism in general and “left behind” eschatology in particular. Flesher shows the way in which Scripture is distorted to serve a political ideology that is grounded in fear. Her book is an accessible invitation to find out what the real scoop of the matter is. There is much to unlearn, and Flesher contributes to that task.” – Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary)

Haddad, Hassan and Donald Wagner. All in the Name of the Bible: Selected Essays on Israel and American Christian Fundamentalism. Beltsville, MD: Amana Publishers, 1986.

Prior, Michael. The Bible and Colonialism: A Moral Critique. Sheffield: Scheffield Academic Press, 1999. (“In this provocative and compelling study, Prior protests at the neglect of the moral question in conventional biblical studies, and attempts to rescue the Bible from being a blunt instrument in the oppression of people. Dr. Michael Prior is Head of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at St. Mary’s University College, University of Surrey.” – Sheffield Academic Press)

Raheb, Mitri. I Am a Palestinian Christian: God and Politics in the Holy Land: A Personal Testimony. Foreword by Rosemary Reuther, translated by Ruth Grutsch Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995. (“Mitri Raheb explores the recent history of the Palestinian Christians, and the complex meeting of the world’s three major monotheistic religions. Clearly and without rancor, his book situates the continuing plight of Palestinians in the unique history of the Palestinian Christians, the national and regional struggles since World War II, and the rich yet complex juncture of the world’s three major monotheistic religions. In the pains and hopes of his people, Raheb reveals an emerging Palestinian Christian theology.” – Fortress Press)

Reuther, Rosemary Radford and Herman J. The Wrath of Jonah: Crisis of Religious Nationalism in the Israeli Palestinian Conflict. New York: Harper and Row, 1989.

Reuther, Rosemary Radford and Marc Ellis. eds. Beyond Occupation: American Jewish, Christian and Palestinian Voices for Peace. Boston: Beacon Press, 1990. (“a welcome source to those interested in the Arab-Israeli conflict and peace studies as well as those looking for a religious perspective on Middle East politics.” – Library Journal)

Shahak, Israel and Norton Mezvinsky. Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel. London: Pluto Press, 1999. (“Shahak and Mezvinsky’s explicit objective is to rouse the reader, particularly the North American reader, into an acknowledgement that Jewish fundamentalism is as ‘pernicious’ as other fundamentalisms. This requires us to approach the Jewish past not as folk-tale, but as history.” – Outlook )

Sizer, Steven. Christian Zionism: Road Map to Armageddon? Downers Grove: IL: IVP Academic, 2005. (“Stephen Sizer’s work on Christian Zionism is the most important and comprehensive on the subject to date, and should be read by all students of the Middle East and by Christians concerned about a just resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Christian Zionism raises vital theological and political challenges that must be addressed head-on by Christians in the West, particularly evangelicals.” – Don Wagner)

Wagner, Don. Anxious for Armageddon: A Call to Partnership for Middle Eastern and Western Christians. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1995. (“This unique resource offers the fascinating account of Donald E. Wagner’s personal experience with the Middle East and calls Western Christians to work with Middle East Christians in healing the pain of Jews and Palestinians. Wagner grippingly tells of his early involvement with streams of Christianity that treat Israel’s possession of the Holy Land as fulfillment of a divine plan that will result in the apocalyptic battle of Armageddon.” – Herald Press)

Wagner, Don and Dan O’Neill. Foreward by Richard Halverson. Peace or Armageddon: The Unfolding Drama of the Middle East Peace Accord. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993. (“In the latter half of the book, especially on the chapters on the Israeli-Christian connection and on Christian Arabs, the authors tackle the uncritical support of U.S. Evangelicals for Israel head-on, with a much wider, more balanced theological worldview.” – Third Way)

Weber, Timothy P. On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel’s Best Friend. Aida, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2004. (“Certain understandings of Bible prophecy have profoundly shaped the way evangelicals and other Americans view Israel and the political policies that have supported the Jewish state….[T]his major work on an ever timely theme is for anyone interested in American-Israeli relations, history, theology, and politics.” – Baker)

Critical Jewish Views on Israel

Abarbanel, Avigail. Beyond Tribal Loyalties: Personal Stories of Jewish Peace Activists. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012. (“Beyond Tribal Loyalties is a unique collection of twenty-five personal stories of Jewish peace activists from Australia, Canada, Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States….Like many Jews, most of the contributors were once unquestioning supporters of Israel and Zionism. Something happened in the life of each of these extraordinary people that caused them to question and re-evaluate their understanding of the conflict and their relationship with Israel and the Palestinian people….Beyond Tribal Loyalties seeks to discover what makes it possible for Jewish peace activists to follow through with this transformative journey and their activist work, despite fanatical and sometimes violent opposition. This is an inspiring book….” – Cambridge Scholars Publishing)

Aviv, Caryn and David Shneer. New Jews: The End of the Jewish Diaspora. New York: New York University Press, 2005. (“For many contemporary Jews, Israel no longer serves as the Promised Land, the center of the Jewish universe and the place of final destination. In New Jews, Caryn Aviv and David Shneer provocatively argue that there is a new generation of Jews who don’t consider themselves to be eternally wandering, forever outsiders within their communities and seeking to one day find their homeland. Instead, these New Jews are at home, whether it be in Buenos Aires, San Francisco or Berlin, and are rooted within communities of their own choosing. Aviv and Shneer argue that Jews have come to the end of their diaspora; wandering no more, today’s Jews are settled.” – NYU Press)

Baltzer, Anna. Witness in Palestine: a Jewish woman in the Occupied Territories. Updated and rev. ed. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2007. (Anna Baltzer is a Jewish American activist for Palestinian human rights. Her book describes her observations and experiences as the result from eight months of documenting human rights abuses in the West Bank. – CJPIP)

Davis, Uri. Apartheid Israel: possibilities for the struggle within. London, New York: Zed Books, 2003. (“Uri Davis is a Jewish citizen of Israel and holds a PhD in Philosophical Anthropology. Davis is a founder of MAIAP (the Movement Against Israeli Apartheid in Palestine). His book describes how the legal system regulates apartheid in Israel and how the State of Israel defined legally as ‘a Jewish and democratic state’ is an oxymoron.” – Foreword, p. xii)

Ellis, Marc. O, Jerusalem. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2000. (“In his latest book Marc Ellis [University Professor of American and Jewish Studies and the founding director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Baylor University] asks the defining question for Jewish life today: ‘Can injustice, represented by Jewish domination of Jerusalem, be at the heart of the covenant?’ Ellis’s answer is that the covenant of Israel with God has been shattered by the creation of a state at the expense of Palestinian life in the land. It can only be renewed by a new ethic and practice of justice that reconcile these two people, who have become irrevocably linked together in the land, either for good or for ill.” – Rosemary Radford Ruether)

Ellis, Marc. Judaism Does Not Equal Israel: The Rebirth of the Jewish Prophetic. New York: New Press, 2009. (“Reviewing the historical record of the past sixty years and envisioning the prospects for a just and lasting peace, Ellis makes an unyielding case–based on the most cherished Jewish values–that the present policies of the Israeli state cannot reasonably be defended. The future not only of Judaism but of Israel itself, he argues, hinges on a fundamental shift in Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and on a completely new direction in the peace process. – New Press)

Feuerlicht, Roberta Strauss. The Fate of the Jews: A People torn Between Israeli Power and Jewish Ethics. New York: Times Books, 1983.

Finkelstein, Norman. Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel is Coming to an End. OR Books, to be released in May, 2012.

Gordon, Neve. Israel’s Occupation. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008. (Gordon is Senior Lecturer in Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, Israel. The author’s goal “is to uncover the daily practices through which the Palestinian inhabitants within the OT …[Occupied Territories] … have been managed, and to explain why Israel’s mechanisms of control were altered over the years.” — Preface, p. xxi)

Halper, Jeff. An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel. London: Pluto Press, 2010. (“Jeff Halper’s book, like his life’s work, is an inspiration. Drawing on his many years of directly challenging Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, he offers one of the most insightful analyses of the occupation I’ve read. His voice cries out to be heard.” — Jonathan Cook)

Karpf, Anne, Brian Klug, Jacqueline Rose, Barbara Rosenbaum, eds. A Time to Speak Out: Independent Jewish Voices on Israel, Zionism and Jewish Identity. New York: Verso, 2008. (“Jewish voices challenge the terms of the Israel/Palestine debate. In A Time to Speak Out, a collection of strong Jewish voices come together to explore some of the most challenging issues facing diaspora Jews. With articles on such topics as international law, the Holocaust, varieties of Zionism, self-hatred, the multiplicity of Jewish identities, and human rights, these essays provide powerful evidence of the vitality of independent Jewish opinion as well as demonstrating that criticism of Israel has a crucial role to play in the continuing history of a Jewish concern for social justice.” – Verso)

Kidron, Peretz, ed. Foreward by Susan Sontag. Refusenik! Israel’s Soldiers of Conscience. New York: Zed Books, 2004. (“Hundreds of Israeli soldiers, called up to take part in controversial campaigns like the 1982 invasion of Lebanon or policing duties in the Palestinian territories today, have refused orders. Many of these ‘refuseniks’ have faced prison sentences rather than take part in what they regard as an unjust occupation in defence of illegal Jewish settlements. Peretz Kidron, himself a refusenik, gives us the stories, experiences, viewpoints, even poetry, of these courageous conscripts who believe in their country, but not in its actions beyond its borders.” – ZED Books)

Kovel, Joel. Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine. London: Pluto Press, 2007. (“Joel Kovel’s uncompromising criticism of Zionism is rooted in a very deep feeling of empathy and solidarity with his fellow-Jews . . . The way out Kovel is suggesting – a bi-national Israeli-Palestinian state – may be challenged, but definitely not ignored. – Michel Warschawski, former director of the Alternative Information Centre in Jerusalem)

Kushner, Tony and Alisa Solomon, eds. Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. New York: Grove, 2003. (“With violence between Israeli Jews and Palestinians continuing and the death toll rising, playwright Kushner and journalist Solomon have compiled a book of thoughts by a progressive and diverse group of notable Jewish writers on the current situation in the Middle East and the prospects for peace. According to the contributors, the media presents an apparent unanimity of Jewish opinion on the conflict, which distorts the real diversity of the community’s convictions. To give some historical perspective to the debate, the book begins with the writings of such figures as Ahad Ha’am, Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt; contemporary contributors include Arthur Waskow, Ellen Willis, Susan Sontag, and lesser-known writers. The essays address such issues as how and why American Jews are connected to the land of their ancestors, and how Zionism has influenced Jewish identity. Rather than distancing themselves from controversy, the editors have encouraged contributors to examine the covenant that links the Jewish people and Israel and to let it be ‘loosened and strengthened, de-mythified, de-fetishized, considered as a dynamic problematic, as is only appropriate to the consideration of a living bond’” – Publishers Weekly)

Leibowitz, Yeshayahu. Edited by Eliezer Goldman. Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995. (“Leibowitz calls the religious justification of national issues “idolatry” and finds this phenomenon at the root of many of the annexationist moves made by the state of Israel. Long one of the most outspoken critics of Israeli occupation in the conquered territories, he gives eloquent voice to his ongoing concern over the debilitating moral effects of its policies and practices on Israel itself. This translation will bring to an English-speaking audience a much-needed, lucid perspective on the present and future state of Jewish culture.” – Harvard University Press.)

Neumann, Michael. The Case Against Israel. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005. (“The Case Against Israel argues that Zionism was responsible for the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and that Israel is responsible for its perpetuation. The argument rests on widely accepted factual claims and impeccable sources.” – Counterpunch [Neumann “graduated from Columbia University with degrees in European history and English literature, followed by a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Toronto; he teaches moral and political philosophy])

Peled, Miko. The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine. Foreward by Alice Walker. Charlottesville, VA: Just World Books, 2012. (“The book provides a compelling and intimate window into the fears that haunt both peoples — but also into the real courage of all those who, like Miko Peled, have been pursuing a steadfast grassroots struggle for equality for all residents in the Holy Land.” – Just World / “There are few books on the Israel/Palestine issue that seem as hopeful to me as this one.” – Alice Walker)

Reinhart, Tanya. The Roadmap to Nowhere: Israel/Palestine Since 2003. London: Verso, 2006. (“Based on analysis of information in the mainstream Israeli media, it argues that the current road map has brought no real progress and that, under cover of diplomatic successes, Israel is using the road map to strengthen its grip on the remaining occupied territories….Reinhart examines the gap between myth the Israeli leadership’s public affairs achievement that has led the West to believe that a road map is in fact being implementedand bitter reality. Not only has nothing fundamentally changed, she argues, but the Palestinians continue to lose more of their land and are pushed into smaller and smaller enclaves…” – Verso.)

Rose, Jacqueline. The Question of Zion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. (Rose, a Jewish woman and professor of English at Queen Mary University of London, has dedicated her book to the memory of Edward Said, author of the Question of Palestine. In the following three short chapters, “Zionism as Messianism (vision)”, “Zionism as Psychoanalysis (Critique)”, and “Zionism as Politics (Violence)” Rose wrestles with the dark side of Zionism and what this means for the future of the State of Israel. – CJPIP)

Rothchild, Alice. Broken Promises, Broken Dreams: Stories of Jewish & Palestinian Trauma & Resilience. New York: Pluto Press, 2007. (“Alice Rothchild grew up in a family grounded by the traumas of the Holocaust and passionately devoted to Israel. This book recounts her experiences as she grapples with the reality of life in Israel, the complexity of Jewish Israeli attitudes, and the hardships of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. Through her work with a medical and human rights project, Rothchild is able to offer a unique personal insight into the conflict. Based on interviews with a number of different women, she examines their diverse perspectives and the complexities of Jewish Israeli identity. Rothchild’s memorable account brings to life the voices of people mutually entwined in trauma, and explores individual examples of resilience and resistance. Ultimately, the book raises troubling questions regarding U.S. policy and the insistence of the mainstream Jewish community on giving unquestioning support to all Israeli policy.” – Pluto Press)

Shatz, Adam, ed. Prophets Outcast: A Century of Dissident Jewish Writing About Zionism and Israel. New York: Nation, 2004. (“Contrary to the claims of the American Jewish establishment and the Israel lobby, Jews do not speak with one voice about the Middle East. Since the early twentieth century some of the fiercest and most eloquent critiques of Israel and Zionism have been made by Jewish thinkers. They have hailed from political and intellectual traditions-Zionism (Hannah Arendt), anti-Zionism (Maxim Rodinson), anarchism (Noam Chomsky), and Marxism (I. F. Stone). Unconditional supporters of the state of Israel have denounced them as heretics. Yet in the midst of the violence engulfing Palestine and Israel, their warnings about the Zionist project, with its vision of an ethnically pure Jewish state, have never seemed more prescient. These prophets outcast speak out as individuals in a wilderness, proposing solutions to the question of Palestine that range from a two-state solution to socialist internationalism. What links them is an understanding that Israeli policies have been a disaster not only for Palestinians, but for Jews as well. As Jews, they express a recognition of the tragic thread that connects the Palestinian catastrophe to the Holocaust, the destruction of European Jewry that made Israel possible, and that led many Jews to view Zionism as their only salvation.” – The Nation)

Holocaust-Israel Connection

Achcar, Gilbert. The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives. New York: Macmillan, 2010. (“In this study Gilbert Achcar exposes a great deal of spurious scholarship on the subject and places Arab attitudes towards the Holocaust and the Jews in their proper historical and intellectual context. It is an erudite, perceptive, and highly original study that shines much-needed light on a field which has tended to be dominated by partisanship and propaganda.” – Avi Shlaim / “This is a work of breath-taking empathy, examining one of the most painful and emotion-laden topics in the modern world with dispassion, sensitivity and high erudition. Gilbert Achcar combines a historian’s profound understanding of the workings of Arab political discourse with a fine appreciation of the traumatic valence of every aspect of this topic. This magisterial study constitutes a welcome advance on the often meretricious and mediocre scholarship produced thus far on the important topic of the Arabs and the Holocaust.”– Rashid Khalidi)

Burg, Avraham. The Holocaust is Over; We Must Rise from Its Ashes. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. (“This is an important book by a very courageous man. The shadow of the Shoah and its abusive application to the contemporary Middle East have been a catastrophe for Jews, Israelis and Arabs alike. In Burg’s view Israel must move beyond Hitler’s poisoned legacy. If they cannot or will not do this, the Middle East will never see peace and Israel has no future.” – Tony Judt, bestselling author of Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 and Professor at New York University)

Finkelstein, Norman. The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering. New York: Verso, 2001. (“His basic argument that memories of the Holocaust are being debased is serious and should be given its due. — The Economist / When it comes to analyzing how ‘The Holocaust’ has been employed to advance political interests, Finkelstein is at his best. — The Nation)

Grodzinsky, Yosef. In the Shadow of the Holocaust: The Struggle Between Jews and Zionists in the Aftermath of World War II. Monroe: Common Courage Press, 2004. (“Written with passion and an obsession for accuracy.” Ariana Melamed, Ha-‘Ir, the leading Tel Aviv weekly” – Amazon book description)

Novick, Peter. The Holocaust in American Life. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. (“Prize-winning historian Peter Novick illuminates the reasons Americans ignored the Holocaust for so long — how dwelling on German crimes interfered with Cold War mobilization; how American Jews, not wanting to be thought of as victims, avoided the subject. He explores in absorbing detail the decisions that later moved the Holocaust to the center of American life: Jewish leaders invoking its memory to muster support for Israel and to come out on top in a sordid competition over what group had suffered most; politicians using it to score points with Jewish voters. With insight and sensitivity, Novick raises searching questions about these developments.” – Mariner Books)

Segev, Tom. The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust. Translated by Haim Watzman. New York: First Owl Books, 2000. (“In his telling – based on thousands of archival documents and numerous interviews – the Holocaust became a political football in the hands of the various factions that continue to plague Israel. Few idols are left unscathed here – not Chaim Weizmann, not Ben-Gurion, not Menachem Begin.” – Kirkus Reviews)

Zertal, Idith. Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. (“The ghost of the Holocaust is ever present in Israel, in the lives and nightmares of the survivors and in the absence of the victims. In this compelling and disturbing analysis, Idith Zertal, a leading member of the new generation of revisionist historians in Israel, considers the ways Israel has used the memory of the Holocaust to define and legitimize its existence and politics.” – Cambridge University Press)

Resolving the Conflict

Abunimah, Ali. One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. New York: Henry Holt, 2006. (“Much recent commentary on the stalled Middle East peace process has focused on ways to redirect Israelis and Palestinians toward the “road map for peace,” which aims to end hostilities by gradually establishing an independent Palestinian state that would exist alongside, albeit entwined with, the Israeli state. With this book, an outspoken advocate for the Palestinian cause argues that peace in the region can be better achieved by establishing a single, united, democratic state. Abunimah is not, of course, the first to propose a one-state, or ‘binational’ solution – indeed, interest in a one-state solution has grown as the two-state model has sputtered – and he is well aware of the obstacles to a one-state solution: namely, that socioeconomic inequality, disproportionate birth rates, and a perceived loss of sovereignty would seem to provide meager incentives for Jewish Israelis. But Abunimah’s approach, inspired by ongoing reconciliation processes in South Africa (and, to a lesser extent, Northern Ireland), is fresh, energetic, and ultimately optimistic that those tired of violence will eventually gravitate toward an inclusive, unified Israel.” – Booklist)

Akram, Susan. Edited by Michael Dumper, Michael Lynk, and Iain Scobbie. International Law and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Rights-based Approach to Middle East Peace. New York: Routledge, 2011. (“Placing a rights-based approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the centre of discussions over its peaceful resolution, this book provides detailed consideration of international law and its application to political issues….Contributions from leading scholars in their respective fields give an in-depth analysis of key issues that have been marginalized in most mainstream discussions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” – Routledge.)

Barghouti, Omar. Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2011. (“I have been to Palestine where I’ve witnessed the racially segregated housing and the humiliation of Palestinians at military roadblocks. I can’t help but remember the conditions we experienced in South Africa under apartheid. We could not have achieved our freedom without the help of people around the world using the nonviolent means of boycotts and divestment to compel governments and institutions to withdraw their support for the apartheid regime. Omar Barghouti’s lucid and morally compelling book is perfectly timed to make a major contribution to this urgently needed global campaign for justice, freedom and peace.” – Archbishop Desmond Tutu / “Like the anti-apartheid movement against racist South Africa, BDS is helping to make a tremendous difference in what has been a most difficult struggle for human rights and the rights of a colonized and dispossessed people to national self-determination. This inspiring book is a weapon in a noble struggle in which all right-thinking people can play a part.” – Ronnie Kasrils, author, activist, and former South African government minister / “I commend this excellent book by Omar Barghouti…. BDS is a nonviolent way in which each of us and our governments can follow our conscience and rightful moral and legal responsibility and act now to save Palestinian lives by demanding that the Israeli apartheid regime give justice and equality to all.” – Mairead Maguire, 1976 Nobel Peace Laureate)

Carter, Jimmy. Palestine: Peace not Apartheid. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007. (“Carter feels strongly that what he has to say is absent from public discourse and policy decisions, and he knows that his status and voice provide authority to what might otherwise be rejected out of hand as anti-Israeli propaganda. He explains that Israel has never complied with U.N. Resolution 242 and others; has never lived up to its agreements made over the years in Washington, Oslo and elsewhere; continues to grab land through settlements and placement of a wall well within Palestinian territory; and still imprisons thousands of Palestinian men, women and children. While pointing out many murderous and counterproductive moves of Arafat and various Palestinian groups, he pointedly lays the blame for the current situation at the door of the Israelis and their Washington backers, with special venom for Bush and Rice, who have been mute on the subject for six years—even during the invasion of Lebanon.” — Publishers Weekly)

Qumsiyeh, Mazin. Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human Rights and the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle. London: Pluto Press, 2004. (“Sharing the Land of Canaan is a critical documentation of these events and the core issues of the conflict, with the view that human rights are key to any plans for a lasting peace. There is a growing interest in a vision and a roadmap for peace based on human rights among Israelis, Palestinians, and human rights activists around the world. A shared future is increasingly recognized as far more realistic than separation and continued injustice. This book examines facts on the ground and articulates future directions based on the logic of equality and human rights, rather than apartheid. The advocated solutions are not only moral, ethical, and humane but can actually achieve a lasting and just peace. People who now live in this land of Canaan and those dispossessed from it will find the roadmap presented here compelling.” – Pluto Press)